I found it to be an engaging set. There wasn't one foul timbre to my ears. So glad there weren't any corny "synth strings" type of sounds. I especially enjoyed the metamorphosing of the various layers and moments. It all mixed quite well into a whole. Okay, maybe I wanted Bill Fox's stringed instrument up a notch or two and maybe the boomy bassy moment could've been down a notch, but that's just splitting hairs. Overall, I thought it was psychedelic (in the pink floyd sense not the san francisco sense) and great for "spacing out" to. This is not to say XE were merely "space music" clones, there was some stretching out going on from there as far as I can tell. *thumbs up* XE

*Nodding in agreement* to the following:

from Gina Rezni's pre-show promo announcement
wrote:

Xeroid Entity: Xeroid Entity is constantly exploring new musical territory
by going beyond the barriers of standard conventions while still drawing upon classical influences. Their music ranges from light and whimsical to dark and aggressive, often within the same piece. Much of it is ambient in nature; without a discernable beat. When they do play rhythmically based music, there are often complex counter rhythms giving the music a poly-rhythmic flavor. The results can be subtle and spacey without being boring, noisy without being harsh, dynamic yet continuous. ...

Thanks for the nice report, AgentA. Sure wish you would have come up and identified yourself. Still a mystery man.

This wasn't a great performance of ours, in my opinion. You were correct in noticing, we were having some severe level problems. Well, maybe they were only moderate problems. I was suffering from a nasty head cold and that probably made me a bit more grumpy than usual.

Our music is in the space music vein, but we are stretching. We are lucky to be near Philadelphia where there is a great space music venue, The Gatherings. I go to these concerts religiously, although I find most, not all, of the music boring. Bill is really into this stuff, having a weekly space music radio program. He's quite knowledgeable.

We are trying to create interesting, or dare I say it, intelligent space music. We try to avoid looping and delays. We even have a rule, if we start up a sequencer, it is played continuously by a person; never run mindlessly in the background.

We did make a mini-disk recording which sounds amazingly well, or so it seemed in the car on the way home. Such tiny things make such good recordings.

In the coming weeks, we're going to be finishing up our second CD.

Maybe Greg and Bill will have something else to say.

Thanks AgentA and everyone else for coming. We got a good turnout for GTMBA, it seemed to me.

Well, I pretty much agree with Howard.
I think the performance was ok, and people in the audience told me they liked it. I had severe problems with the monitoring setup - I couldn't hear the monitors and was listening to the sound bouncing off the back walls. It was enough of a lag that I couldn't really feel what I was playing enough to contribute the proper expressiveness. So I was mostly playing from memory the kinds of things I had played in rehearsal, but not so much "in the moment." I'm probably being overly critical, but to me the ability to play in the moment is everything. I blame myself for not insisting on a proper sound check (by the time they were ready, the audience was there and waiting to hear the first act), and for not realizing quickly enough that the monitors were too low. I should have known, because this happened to me one time before at the Rotunda. But I learned a valuable lesson - at future gigs I will always be prepared with a headphone monitoring setup.

AgentA - I think you did talk to me after the show? But you didn't say who you were.

I had severe problems with the monitoring setup - I couldn't hear the monitors and was listening to the sound bouncing off the back walls. It was enough of a lag that I couldn't really feel what I was playing enough to contribute the proper expressiveness. So I was mostly playing from memory the kinds of things I had played in rehearsal, but not so much "in the moment." I'm probably being overly critical, but to me the ability to play in the moment is everything. I blame myself for not insisting on a proper sound check (by the time they were ready, the audience was there and waiting to hear the first act), and for not realizing quickly enough that the monitors were too low. I should have known, because this happened to me one time before at the Rotunda. But I learned a valuable lesson - at future gigs I will always be prepared with a headphone monitoring setup..

Arrgh... bad monitoring is awful. It is completely alienating to be on stage and have bad monitoring._________________A Charity Pantomime in aid of Paranoid Schizophrenics descended into chaos yesterday when someone shouted, "He's behind you!"

I agree with both Howard and Greg about the monitoring. The music sounds fine to me. Unfortunately, all the time I spend mastering it this morning is wasted. When Howard goes subaudio, my compressors go haywire. We might have to have Howard put a high pass filter on his patches to tame the bottom end when we record to two track or play live. Or I just need to learn how to improve my mastering skills!

Listen to EMUSIC this Thursday. I'm prerecording the show today since I'll be in Cleveland for Thanksgiving. But I plan to use one of the pieces from GTMBA. If you listen by computer, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!! WDIY likes to track where our listeners are with pins on a world map._________________Bill Fox------------------|\-------------
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Bill - try running the audio through a multi-band compressor - you can set it up so that the low end is only squashed when needed without effecting the mids and highs. If you don't have either a hardware of software version, stop on by the studio one evening and I'll run it through one for you on the tracks you need it done to, then you can take them back for further mastering.

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